A Journal Keeper

This is my very first ever journal entry:
January 1, 1988
Dear Diary, 
    Today I didn't do much. I just sat around most of the day. I played with [K.B.] for about 10 minutes, then we went to the lake, it was frozen so my dad went ice skating. I didn't like it much, (going to the lake) my nose and legs felt like they were going to fall off, it was so cold. On the way home my dad let us pick out a candy at 7 eleven and I at mine all except 10 pieces, and somebody ate them. Well that's about all, good night.
This entry was written when I was 9 years old. I didn't even write my vital statistics, which I was careful to do in every journal thereafter, letting all new readers to my journal know that I was born May 26, 1978 in Provo Utah to Kathy Sue and Alan Barrett, because someone will want to know those things when I'm dead!  
This entry is very telling of patterns that carried on throughout my life. I still hate the cold, in fact I am allergic to it, getting great swelling hives all over my body when I'm extremely cold, and feeling very depressed in the winter months when I have to endure the pain of cold on a daily basis. I'm way too hard on myself to "do things" and if I haven't done enough then I count the day a waste.    Every word of this entry was spelled correctly and I even indented my paragraph, suggesting to the world that I was a very analytical child, who turned into a perfectionist, who had to learn how to become an ex-perfectionist to save my mental health. And interestingly enough, it illustrates in those 5 short lines that growing up I ate entirely too much candy, and I developed quite a craving for sugar that existed throughout my whole life and caused some major problems.
In 2009 I intended to give up sugar entirely for 3 months, which lasted 3 days, and it took the next three years just to slowly overcome my need for dessert and candy. By 2012 I stay away from candy and desserts for all but 2 days of the year, my birthday and Thanksgiving. Junior Mints and Recess Cups became only a memory. Since I live in the USA there was a lot of sugar ingested all the same, sugar is in nearly everything. I didn’t learn that I was still slowing killing myself until 2014.
My latest journal entry:
April 10, 2014
Day 10 of not ingesting any sugar or flour in any form other than small amounts of honey in my whole wheat bread. My dizzy spells have continued to be completely gone, even when I'm lifting weights, which is amazing to me. I feel a strange sort of weakness like my body is yelling at me "where are the carbs???" especially when I'm working out. However, I have been able to stay up later, my motivation level is high, I can keep up on my housework better, have had less irritation with my children and husband, and my taste buds have changed so that I'm enjoying my whole foods more (this morning my cherry tomato tasted like candy). I've been more regular than I have ever been in my life, and my anxiety at night has decreased from a 9 to a 2 on a scale from 1 to 10. I haven't had any migraines yet, I haven't had any sickness of any kind, it even seems like I'm not grinding my teeth so much.  My body is still adjusting so I still have some withdrawal symptoms like crawling skin and cravings, but so far the results are so positive I am hopeful I will be able to pull this off. It hasn't been as daunting finding whole organic foods at the grocery store as I thought it would, you have to wade through a lot of junk but it's there, which suggests to me that others are on this mission too. Jared says I need to give it a couple months to see what the real results will be, I have lost 4 pounds and still feel somewhat weak, I want to be able to maintain a healthy weight, feel energized and strong, and be free from withdrawal symptoms completely while eating only whole foods.  I'm already convinced that Heavenly Father gave me the answer I need to heal, but I need to keep it up and observe the fruits of my labor, if I heal from these health problems that have plagued me so long it will be evidence to the world that sugar is dangerous and abstaining from it can be the answer for others to heal also. 

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." --Randy Pausch